


Elysium

by tavrosdidnothingwrong



Series: WV: Observe Davekat [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles (Homestuck), Established Relationship, First Time, M/M, The Mayor's Friendship Is A Universal Constant, [S] Game Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26413906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tavrosdidnothingwrong/pseuds/tavrosdidnothingwrong
Summary: "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."After the events of Game Over, WV – who shouldn’t technically exist in dream bubbles – finds Dave and Karkat again.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Wayward Vagabond & Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas
Series: WV: Observe Davekat [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919896
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Elysium

**Author's Note:**

> Got the idea for this while listening to one of my favorite songs in the world, [this beautiful opera piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzFowdAXpGg) by Charlotte Church.

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

_\- Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet_

You were the Weary Warvillain, the Wizzardly Vassal, the Wayward Vagaband, and the Mayor. Now you are dead.

You are a longtime Derse inhabitant, so you know a thing or two about the way dead things live through dreams. You have seen princes and princesses float from the windows of spires, glowing against the violet kingdomscape. You have known, as not but a pawn in the kingdom, that nothing happens to you when you die. You only have one shell, though it’s had many names. Any time could be your time.

LOHAC is burning down around you. Flames lap at your arms and legs, but you can no longer feel them. The magma storm rocking to and fro in this volcano will cover you soon. Another earthquake rumbles from an explosion somewhere close. Dave’s planet is crumbling, Dave is not here and Karkat is – you’ve lost your Blood connection with him, for you don’t know how long now. You know what that means.

A massive piece of cavern ceiling cracks and falls towards its flaming innards, you included. You try to reach out to Dave – he was fighting before, angry, thinking only that he had to save Jade – but you can no longer feel his mind, either.

So you reach out to yourself. You tell yourself that you were a good Mayor, that you led a good life, led the weak to strength. The ceiling rock crushes you, and your vision goes black.

You are lying on your back on a solid floor. The space you are in is so dark, it makes no difference whether you blink or not. You feel your body with your hands, find the familiar, thick, worn fabric of your robes, the ones you’ve been wearing for a long time.

You are not sure if this is the Dersite prison, as the last time you were imprisoned – for distributing serf level anti war propaganda – your room was covered in glowing violet tiles, as are all cells built above the ground floor. If this is a pitch black Dersite cell, you must have gotten caught mobilizing troops on your farmlands, which is a felony. They must have found the weapons your people have built, the provisions, the firestarters. You don’t remember what happened when they took you away, threw you down here.

You sit up from the cold floor. You are pleasantly surprised – but confused – that none your extremities are broken or strained. In fact, you can stand easily. In fact, your body feels somehow new. It’s as if you never had any chitinous rashes, swollen joints, or injuries in your life. You blink rapidly, trying to adjust your light sensitivity, but no matter how hard you try, the room remains as dark as before.

Until you see a spot of orange flame in the distance, moving towards you and growing the while, accompanied by shallow footsteps. You are unsure if you should approach the light, as its warm glow starts to show you that the walls around you are narrow, an arc of a concrete hallway with metal floors. The footsteps grow louder, heavier, closer, and you start to step back, your nervous and blood circulation systems firing.

Your back hits a wall and you jump. The glowing flame grows near enough to present its owner, a creature you know you recognize. Black hair, gray skin, vicious frown.

You blink into his solid white eyes, and you remember.

“Holy shit.”

Karkat bodily runs into you, knocking the wind from your pipes, squeezing you in an embrace. You wrap your arms around him as far as they can go, as he clutches you as tight as he can with one arm. The weight of him sinks into your robes.

“ _You’re_ here?” His voice is ragged. “How the fuck can you be in my dream bubble?”

You discover that you’re in the underground shelter that Karkat’s lusus built under his hive, on his memory of the planet Alternia. Karkat wastes no time bringing you upstairs, holding your hand as the lead, into the castle-like hive that he built with the carpenter droids when he was young. You quietly walk through a maze of empty rooms and hallways, high ceilings and twelve paneled windows, awash with the pink glow of the sky. This place looks a lot cooler than you expected, based on his descriptions of the past.

Your destination is a large room of the hive that is actually furnished and decorated, though only with posters of his movies, a plain desk and low table, troll care essentials like traps, and mounted sickle weapons. The tiny meal block is all cooking ranges and marble counters, a steel table with only one chair. Karkat offers you the chair, and you insist that he take it. He rolls his eyes – you can still tell even through their ghostly pallor – and pushes you gently but assertively into the chair.

He kneels down below you, hand still in yours, squinting, observing you.

“The consensus about these fucking ridiculous bubbles was that we never saw any of the constructs the game generated for us – the imps, the ogres, you, we all thought the game only gave the bubbles to us.” His eyes well up with tears, bright red, and he clears his throat, turning his face away from you. He closes his eyes, letting tears fall. “But you’re here.”

_Blood is how I am with you._

You find yourself relaying this to his mind, even though you only just thought about it now. The Blood aspect that Karkat holds within him has always drawn you close to him, made you feel “more real.” It was like you didn’t fully know you were an NPC until you met him.

He frowns a touch. “My powers?”

You explain that you don’t know for sure, but that you’ve observed him make incredible bonds with his Blood, and this falls in line with his usual abilities. _Your connection to me is so strong that you dreamed me into this place._

He stands up suddenly, running back into the hallway maze.

“Dave!“

You know Dave – you can feel Karkat’s Blood creating his image for you, remember how joyous you felt at the sound of his voice, the way he taught you about love.

Karkat and Dave return – Dave wears his red god clothes, shades on.

“No fuckin’ way.”

He hugs you and sobs immediately.

When he’s done, he closes himself back up. Adjusts his shades, donning the “cool boy” face.

“I’m just really happy to see you, man.”

You sit in Karkat’s hive and listen to them explain the conditions of their bubble, how they got here. You are at the low to the ground table with black pillows to sit on, and Karkat has served grub juice on ice, which Dave notoriously hates, and you love. You of course prefer TAB, and ask if they know if TAB exists in dream bubbles. Dave says he’ll find you some.

Karkat died first, woke up in this replication of Alternia. He had to pester Kanaya – you look over at the computer on the desk and see the chat window on screen – in order to find out that he was dead, not in a memory of a few days before the game. He went outside on his balcony, looked around, tried to tell himself that he could wander since this was just a ghost imprint. "Society" wouldn’t cull him, there probably weren’t even drones. But he still couldn’t leave his hive.

It took a lot of courage, and another chat with Kanaya, to encourage him to explore. He went out for a while sometimes – outside his porch, the environment would change to a memory of Terezi’s forest, Gamzee’s beach - but eventually, he would just end up running back towards his hive.

The Kanaya he connected with was from the same timeline as him, also dead, so he asked her if she could appear in his hive. He said it happens all the time, suddenly the person you’re pestering appears. They talked about the last things they remember happening, and Karkat was freaking out wanting to know if Dave was dead too. Kanaya found Rose, who found Dave. As far as they knew, everyone was dead. Karkat wanted to be alone to process this for a while, and spend time with his lusus.

He watched sunrise and night fold over for several days, going through his belongings, talking to the ghost memory of his lusus, who appeared only at night. He tried to pester Dave but got no responses. One night he was out on his balcony, and he saw Dave coming up the hill in the distance.

Dave tells his story now. He died trying to save Jade from Bec Noir and PM. You are distressed to find out that your wonderful former friend killed him. You wonder what happened to her.

Dave woke up in his apartment in Texas, pestering Kanaya about her first few encounters with Rose. Kanaya reminded him that he was dead, then appeared with Rose. Dave was freaking out about Karkat being dead. Rose said he could pester Karkat and ask him, but a part of him felt like he didn’t want to know how he met his fate yet. Kanaya said that she could contact Karkat via pester in his stead, if he wanted, and that would make it so that they could deliver Dave to Karkat. Dave said it was okay, that he would find him on his own if destiny had it, and not long after he ventured out, he wound up in Karkat’s hivestem.

They’ve been here now for five Alternian days. They are trying not to say any more than that, which you know means they are hiding something. You interpret the way they look at each other now: some emotional front has been crossed, and even through their massive loss, they smile at each other. Blushing, embarrassed, but knowing, more about each other than ever before.

You insist that they are leaving details out of the story, but tell them you are glad to see them again, even though all of you are dead.

You watch troll movies together on Karkat’s vaguely TV looking bug device. When they fall asleep - somehow - half on top of each other, you leave them alone to rest. You wander around the rest of the hive, inspecting Karkat’s only other belongings in a room very far from the main one, then go outside.

The memory of Alternia turns into your memories of The Battlefield, just after Jack attacked. You soon come upon the river, streaked in blood and fallen carapaces. As you enter the water, like you did before, you suddenly feel your body flickering in and out of existence, more out than in.

As you’re about to pass out, you feel four hands grab you, flying you away.

> Be Karkat

The three of you hypothesize that WV can’t go too far from you, since your Blood is the reason his ghost self exists. Dave is crying, again, at the idea of losing the Mayor so soon, which breaks your fucking heart more than you even thought was possible. More than you felt when you found out how he died.

You know you need to tell WV what’s changed between you and Dave, since he can sort of tell and he’s only pretending to let you skirt away with it for now. You reflect that you and Dave are Like This around each other now, much more emotionally available, because on that first night you found each other, your passion for each other overtook you, and you passed that last intimacy line you’d been working towards before you died.

It was awkward at first, took a lot of fumbling around, but ultimately the best night of your life. Afterlife. You’d just finished trying it a second time, Dave falling asleep after – how was it possible for dream ghost forms to sleep? you wondered – when you decided to see if your lusus went down into the underground passage, since you hadn’t been able to find him for a while. You thought about what you would say to Dave when he woke up, to talk about what you liked and disliked, the way you’d agreed to do on the meteor perigees before.

What does this mean for you? How long are you going to be dead for? A part of you wonders, what is the point? Can the dead really pity?

Suddenly, as you continued down the long hall with your torch, you felt a rush of emotion. But you knew it wasn’t just internal, wasn’t just Dave. In fact, it was what you felt for Dave multiplied by a telepathic sensation, that you knew could only belong to one special figure.

When you found him, you knew the dead could still pity.

> Be Dave

You wake up on the blankets on the floor, where you and Karkat fell asleep during the movie, where you both crashed once more after rescuing the Mayor from the Battlefield. WV sits on the steel chair, watching you fondly. Karkat still rests – how can dream ghost forms fucking sleep? you wonder – and you watch him through his slumber. You’ve watched him do this many times before, and you try not to cry for like the fifth time in the last few hours when you realize that he’s no longer struggling in his sleep. None of the nightmares of his perceived failures that used to plague him, waking him up in shock, reaching to you for comfort.

You get up to use the ablution block quickly – why dream ghost forms need to pee is even more of an unsolved mystery – and then wander around Karkat’s hive. He seems to not want you to do this without him, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s really all as empty as it looks like. It reminds you that your love felt like he’d never be permanent, never alive long enough to really enjoy his life, and you still want to chase that feeling out of him as much as you can, fill these empty hallways with your art and alchemized bullshit.

Before you can get through much of his hive, the place turns into your memory of the meteor, of Can Town. You’ll definitely take this instead. You miss it. You talk out loud to yourself as you observe the most recent installment of Can Town as you remember it.

“This is the place where Karkat fell out on his ass laughing after the Mayor revealed to him that the latest installment included a row of guillotines, for anyone who became rich and powerful enough to potentially resource hoard the society. Oh shit, this is where I started drawing my new SBAHJ installments. Goddamn past me really needs to come up with better ideas, Santa being a Bard of Time? Really? Whack. This is the day that the Mayor made what he imagined would be me and Karkat’s house. Aw.”

And then you notice the elusive Secret District, tucked away behind the popsicle stick skyscrapers that Karkat built around it up against a wall, which you always said was so unnecessary to a town based on political transparency, you’d never actually been in it before. It was Karkat’s alone time corner, in which he had a say over decoration, planning, and street drawings.

You’re about to cry for a sixth time when you see what Karkat’s drawn behind the skyscrapers. In his questionable chicken scratch art style, Karkat has drawn several depictions of you and him walking through the various streets. In some of the earlier ones – you can tell because he always drew his shit chronologically from right to left – he’s drawn a pale diamond over your heads. Later, a red heart, and then several hearts.

“God you’re such a sappy fuck,” you say to the little Karkat drawings.

“What the bulge scraping hell are you doing in my corner?”

You turn around to find Karkat and the Mayor behind you, staring at you through the space between the skyscrapers.

“I was only ever faking my disinterest in the corner because it annoyed you and you know I love fucking with you.”

He blushes furiously, looks a little alarmed at your word choice.

WV blinks to you that he’d like very much to know what’s going on, with the Secret District and the vibe that he can definitely sense between you, but is obviously waiting for you to confirm.

Karkat sighs. “God, it’s probably just as fucking embarrassing as I remember it.”

He comes to your side and starts raucously complaining about the style of each of his drawings, mentioning nothing to you about the contents, as you sense that WV feels suddenly stricken at being away from Karkat’s side right now, even only a little.

You walk up to him, kneel to his level.

“You alright, little man? We don’t know how long we’re gonna be dead but now that you’re here you’re not allowed to go anywhere, this triangle of friendship is a disease and fuck a chemotherapy, I’m riding it out like god intended.”

_I sense that your ends of the triangle are long past feelings of friendship._

You laugh nervously. WV looks no less serious.

“Look, we’ll tell you, okay?” He looks very much less serious then, excited. “Together. I just don’t know how much you wanna know...the details.”

_I know plenty of details already._

“Oh my god, no you don’t, we don’t ever tell you about – “

_I am connected to him, who is connected to you. I can read your minds whether or not I want to. From distances._

“So then you don’t need us to tell you what happened?”

_I would like to hear you say it. You both acknowledge the meaning of things better after you tell them to me._

“Well shit, can’t argue with you there.”

_You do not have to tell me all the details. I do not want to be traumatized._

“Oh thank god.”

You look back to see that Karkat is talking to a little holographic Kanaya on his crab wrist phone, via her lipstick phone, which you alchemized for her and she only started using just now, because she feels bad that you’re dead. Karkat leaves the corner while talking to her, passing you and the Mayor, telling her that you’ve discovered Can Town, back in the direction of his hive memory.

He stops by the Bubbles Von Salamancer Memorial Library, laughs when she asks if it isn’t still knocked over from her frustration at Rose’s drunkness. “You did _what?_ No, it’s still here standing in all its rusted glory. God, she isn’t still drinking, is she?”

As you watch WV join him, your heart sinks a touch. You wonder again if this is worth it. You love him so much, but you still haven’t said the words, “I love you,” without also couching it in a joke. Because it probably doesn’t even mean the same thing in Alternian, and you don’t want to come off too needy even after seeing his drawings of you, and what if the same thing with Terezi ends up happening, even now that you’re dead? Is Karkat willing to only have one quadrant mate, for you? Can he?

WV can obviously hear you thinking all this. He looks over at you from Karkat’s side expectantly, all but gently demanding a feelings jam as soon as you get back to his hive.

> Be Karkat

Dave is out on your balcony, talking to Rose on her vaguely wizard shaped wrist phone, which she’s only using now because she feels bad that her brother is dead. You can see him through the glass doors, pacing back and forth, though you can’t tell what he’s saying to her on his puppet ass phone.

_You have not told him you pity him in so many words._

WV is impatient to start the feelings jam, sitting next to you on his pillow.

“No, I haven’t, because it’s hard to fucking explain what it means in English, and he’s fucking hopeless at parsing Alternian, because human wormbeast brains are a fraction of our superior thinkpans.”

_That is not the only reason._

You look over at him, and almost cry again. Because of what he’s asking you to admit, because you still can’t believe you’ll get to spend the rest of this with him.

“No, it’s not. You already know this, but I don’t really see the point. For all we know, Lord English could blow this joint in the next five minutes. I mean, the cracks in the sky are a pretty good measure, but they’re spreading faster and faster every time I look at them, and what if he doesn’t feel the same way?”

_You know he does._

“Do I?”

_Hasn’t he shown you?_

He’s right. Dave has shown you – emotionally, spiritually, physically – through his actions and his roundabout words.

WV then tells you that, during what would be his last few moments on LOHAC, he was trying to relay something to you, something that Dave felt was meant for you too, but he reached out to find that you were gone. You tell him that you really don’t need to cry anymore, really? not before the big fucking feelings jam.

WV says he thinks it’s funny you’d call it that, and then relays the message he was going to send, which you somehow hear in Dave’s voice:

if i never see you again i just wanted you to know

its been real man

you were always there for me

you shared my darkest hours

my deepest secrets

and ill never fucking forget it

And well, fuck not trying to cry, you guess. You remember that you had no idea that the last time you’d see him was on the roof of the meteor. You’d been so long out of battle, so dazed and stir crazy from your long excursion, you weren’t even remotely ready for what you faced. You’re pissed at yourself for not being so, still, even though you know it was because you’d been slowly healing instead.

“I’m just angry,” you tell the Mayor. “That we fucking failed after all of that work. I don’t know if I’m a whole enough troll for Dave. I know he loves me, pities me, whatever, but will he if we’re dead for thousands of sweeps? Some of the ghosts say it can feel like that long, and without him that sounds fucking awful. Would he find enough to love, no matter how long it lasts?”

_Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

You sit for a moment to parse the rhyme, understand its meaning.

_I read that from one of Rose’s human poetry books._

“It’s beautiful,” you tell him, and reach for his tiny hand, which he rests in yours. “Thank you.”

As you and Dave tell him how you felt – that when you found each other, it all clicked into place, that you weren’t going to have to go through this alone – you realize further the meaning of WV’s poem. You are learning how to weaponize your anger into passion, to not let what stalls you and tries to break you stick. You are learning how to live with slowly dying, and you won’t let your lights fade – you couldn’t do it to Dave or the Mayor – as you unleash hell through passion on whatever you have left.

> Be the Wayward Vagabond

Being dead feels weird, but there are moments. Right now you’re in a memory of your home on The Battlefield, watching human romcom movies on the projector Dave installed on Karkat’s husktop. Karkat is talking to Dave about something stupid from the movie, and you watch them chatter fondly, losing themselves in the moment. You are so glad they will have each other through this.

The cracks in the sky are growing deeper. You know the end is coming, but it’s still coming slow enough. You are with them in every possible way that you know to exist, until it all ends.


End file.
